In This Issue the Recovery Act Spending That Wasn't There
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Subscribe Blog Donate January 12, 2010 Vol. 11, No. 1 In This Issue Fiscal Stewardship The Recovery Act Spending That Wasn't There Government Openness Chemical Secrecy Increasing Risks to Public Administration Revises Classification and Declassification Systems Protecting the Public Hundreds of Rules May Be Void after Agencies Miss Procedural Step Improving Implementation of the Paperwork Reduction Act Protecting Nonprofit Rights Federal Court Rules on Voting Rights of Incarcerated Felons The Recovery Act Spending That Wasn't There Recovery Act recipient reporting has received a great deal of attention in the media, and while some of this coverage has been critical (reporting on non-existent congressional districts or ZIP codes, unreliable job creation numbers, etc.), many news articles portray comprehensive oversight of the act because of transparency requirements in the law. However, approximately two-thirds of the spending in the Recovery Act bypasses these requirements, leading to a dearth of information about how the money is being spent. As time passes and Recovery Act spending continues, this lack of data is becoming more apparent, as highlighted by a recent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) report showing that millions of dollars in Recovery Act tax breaks are vulnerable to tax fraud. About one-third of Recovery Act spending, the discretionary funding, is subject to the tight reporting requirements and provides monetary resources for infrastructure, research, green energy, and other projects. Recipients of discretionary spending must report to the federal government on the use of their funds, reports which can be found on Recovery.gov and OMB - 1 - Watch’s FedSpending.org. These reports provide unprecedented details on federal spending, containing information on recipient location, place of performance, a project description, number of jobs created, and the five highest-paid employees. The other two-thirds of Recovery Act spending include entitlement spending and tax expenditures. Entitlements are direct payments to people, such as unemployment insurance, COBRA health insurance benefits, and one-time Social Security payments; tax expenditures are the tax credits and deductions authorized by the act. Congress exempted these entitlement payments and tax cuts from the Recovery Act reporting requirements largely for privacy reasons. This means that recipients of unemployment benefits or the Making Work Pay tax credit, for instance, do not report any information to Recovery.gov, and none is displayed. (click to enlarge) Accordingly, there is little information available on Recovery Act tax expenditures or entitlement spending, making debate on spending efficacy difficult. As policy experts and lawmakers vigorously debate the effect of the discretionary spending – thanks to the more than 130,000 recipient reports on discretionary spending released in October – they remain largely silent on the effectiveness of tax expenditures and entitlement spending. One recent report helped highlight this disparity. In November 2009, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), the inspector general for the IRS, released a report warning that the IRS does not know if the $288 billion in Recovery Act tax expenditures are being claimed legitimately and cannot know without extensive auditing. The problem is that the IRS did not require additional documentation for the new credits and deductions. For instance, the Recovery Act provides funding for the First-Time Homebuyer - 2 - Credit, which provides a fully refundable $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers, but the IRS does not require additional documentation for this credit, such as a HUD Settlement Statement, nor does it check the return against any third-party source, such as a housing database. Tax filers can claim the housing credit without providing any proof that they actually have purchased a house or even that a purchased house is a first-time purchase for the taxpayer. The only way the IRS can catch such fraudulent claims is through an audit. The IRS claims requiring documentation on tax credits and deductions is too "burdensome" on businesses and individuals, because filing documentation precludes electronic filing; the IRS notes that this would prevent some two million First Time Homebuyer Credit claimants from filing electronically. But detecting fraud after federal funds have been disbursed (i.e., through an audit instead of before a return is processed) usually results in a lower rate of return on tax enforcement, since audits are a lengthy and relatively costly process compared to requiring upfront documentation. This problem exists because Congress did not enact any transparency provisions for the tax expenditures and entitlement spending. The lack of transparency and accountability provisions in these sections of the Recovery Act is apparent now that the first round of recipient reports has been released. While Recovery.gov users can track the precise details of some $275 billion in discretionary spending, down to the location of the material suppliers for some projects, next to nothing is known about the recipients of the remaining two-thirds of Recovery Act spending. The privacy rights of citizens should be protected, but more information on Recovery Act tax expenditures and entitlement spending is needed. Currently, there is very little information available, and accordingly, little debate. The TIGTA report caused little reaction outside of a few, tax policy-focused blogs. The most attention the issue received was in the form of a short New York Times article, published almost a month after TIGTA released the report. Additional data, if available, would help shed light on how this money is being used. Chemical Secrecy Increasing Risks to Public Excessive secrecy prevents the public from knowing what chemicals are used in their communities and what health impacts might be associated with those substances, according to a recent analysis of government data by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG). The growing practice of concealing data alleged to be trade secrets has seemingly hobbled regulators' ability to protect the public from potential risks from thousands of chemicals. Calling the situation "a regulatory black hole, a place where information goes in – but much never comes out," EWG's analysis, Off the Books: Industry's Secret Chemicals, criticizes the nation's primary chemical statute, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), and highlights excessive secrecy as one of the law's biggest flaws. By literally locking up the data within a few offices at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the agency prevents researchers, in and out of government, from identifying risks and - 3 - problems with the use of the rapidly growing number of chemicals in commerce. Moreover, without the information, the public is unable to make informed decisions regarding the safety of everyday activities – from what cleaning products to use to what bedding to sleep on. The data obtained by EWG under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) partially reveals the extent to which EPA is allowing chemical manufacturers to hide chemical names, the chemicals’ characteristics, and often even the identity of manufacturers. EWG also found that for two out of every three chemicals that entered commerce in the past 30 years, their identity remains secret. Of the more than 83,000 chemicals in commerce, information on 20 percent is kept secret. These secret chemicals include substances that have shown a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment. The list of secret chemicals also includes those used in products specifically designed for children. The 33-year-old TSCA includes provisions to protect information that manufacturers claim would hurt their profits if it were disclosed. Businesses can claim that such information is confidential business information (CBI) when they submit it to the agency. If the government does not raise an objection to the claim, it must protect the information from disclosure. Many offices don’t have sufficient staff to review all of the CBI claims made by companies in their submissions. In the case of chemicals, the EPA does not share information claimed as CBI with other agencies, state or local officials, emergency personnel, or even within EPA itself, except under certain, highly restricted circumstances. The use of CBI claims by chemical companies has been increasing. The EPA data show that secret chemicals make up a much greater proportion of widely used chemicals than they did 15 years ago. Secret chemicals increased five to six times by volume produced from 1990 to 2006. According to the EWG report, "Hiding the identity of these chemicals could significantly delay or completely prevent actions to reduce exposures to compounds that by definition require an open and transparent evaluation of their risks." The refusal to disclose chemical information can have serious consequences for public health. In 2008, a spill of fluids used in natural gas drilling sent a drilling worker to the hospital. The worker recovered quickly, but one of the nurses treating him was also exposed to the chemicals on the worker's boots, and her health gradually deteriorated. As the nurse's health declined, her physicians struggled to get the needed information on the drilling chemicals she was exposed to because the information was considered a trade secret. The EWG study did not evaluate how frequently EPA challenges claims of CBI or what